Sports-crazy Frisco, Texas, would welcome PGA of America

The Dallas Cowboys football team is shown here playing at AT& T Stadium in Arlington, Texas in 2017. The team’s world headquarters and training facility is located in Frisco, Texas. (Photo by Ronald Martinez/Getty Images)

The sports-mad fast-growing city of Frisco, Texas, is home to seven professional sports teams, and numerous athletic organizations as diverse as NCAA sports, youth soccer and Olympic-caliber gymnastics.

Tony Felker, president and CEO of the Frisco Chamber of Commerce, said Thursday that while he has read news reports about a possible move by the PGA, he can’t speak to it directly as he had not heard anything about it.

“We have seven teams that call Frisco home. That is more professional teams in any one city anywhere else in North America,” Felker said. “We have basketball, baseball, football, hockey, gymnastics, lacrosse and indoor football. If something like this were to come about, it would put golf on the radar also.”

The Dallas Cowboys is the best-known team headquartered in Frisco. The Cowboys corporate headquarters is at The Ford Center at The Star. The $1.5 billion complex is home to the team’s operations including its locker room, training room, coaches offices and more. It plays games at AT&T Stadium in Arlington.

The Frisco center includes one indoor and two outdoor practice fields. The team trains at the site that includes a 510,000-square-foot indoor athletic facility in partnership with the City of Frisco and the Frisco Independent School District. All eight of Frisco’s public high schools play home games within the Ford Center.

The facility is part of the “$5 Billion Mile” — a stretch where $5 billion in development is underway, Felker said. It’s comprised of four mixed-use developments along the Dallas North Tollway.

“Attention on sports helps bring a lot of people to the community, or to become aware of Frisco via TV. It’s a great city, new and progressive and has all this going on. People think, ‘I just might want to move my company there,’” Felker said.

“It’s ranked as one of the best cities in which to raise an athlete,” Felker said.

When it comes to companies relocating, Texas provides tough competition for Florida. Like Florida, it has no state income tax.

In 2016, Jamba Juice moved from California to Frisco. The deal to move the 100-employee company included grants from the City of Frisco and the Texas Enterprise Fund — which provided an $800,000 grant.

In 2017 the Frisco Bowl moved from South Florida where it was known as the Miami Beach Bowl. The college football game is played at Toyota Stadium, a soccer-specific stadium owned by the City of Frisco.